Tag Archives: Socialism

It is more than twenty years since I fell in love with China. Being a lazy lover, I didn’t go there until the 11th of this month (September 2013).

I thought I would be able to update Free Haifa fresh with my impressions from the spot. But it appears that China is more efficient than I thought with blocking imperialist tools like WordPress. Though we were well connected, we were out of touch with Facebook, and our only connection to the outside world was by email.

You may blame the Chinese state for not having anything new on Free Haifa for three weeks – the longest interruption since the blog was launched. Your consolation may be that instead of immediate superficial impressions I may write more thoughtful and balanced reports. One of them may be about China’s policy toward the internet…

Why I love China?

Being educated as western socialists, we used to see the Soviet Union, love it or not, as the main example of implementation of socialism. After the privileged bureaucracy of the Soviet Union decided that it can live better in a capitalist system, where its privilege may be legitimized and multiply as capitalist exploitation of “added value”, many people declared that there is socialism no more. I started following in detail those 3rd world countries that sticked to socialism.

Soon I concentrated on China, by far the biggest and most dynamic of current day socialist experiences. I was regularly reading different sources, mostly The Economist, the BBC and China Daily. I tried to follow small stories from both sides to really understand where things are going and why.

One example is the issue of deadly accidents in China’s coal mines. China relies for most of its energy consumption on locally mined coal. As economic development and standards of living were racing in full speed, energy demand was increasing by double digit percentage yearly and coal production had to follow suit. To meet the demand the coal sector was “liberalized” with “free for all” development and many small mines opened, unsafe and lightly supervised. Wikipedia speaks of China producing 40% of the world’s coal in 2007, employing 5 million workers to mine it, with up to 20,000 miners dying in accidents yearly.

For some time I was following in detail the measures that the Chinese authorities were implementing to reduce the death toll in the mines. Thousands of small mines were closed due to sub-standard safety conditions. As there were complaints about lenient enforcement of safety regulations by officials with self interest in the mining industry, there came a special regulation preventing state and party officials from holding private stakes in coal. When all these steps seemed not to be enough, the authorities adopted an innovating approach: a new regulation demanded that a member of the management team will go down the mine with the workers on every shift, so he will have the time and motivation to care personally that everybody goes up.

Another example was the issue of worker’s organization. Walmart, America’s giant retail multinational, the biggest private employer worldwide, prevents its more than 2 million workers from their right to organize in trade unions. In 2004, when workers in one Walmart store in Jonquière, Quebec (Canada) organized in a union, the management closed the branch. The pressure to organize the workers is cited as one reason why Walmart retreated from Germany. As Walmart was expanding to China, it was warned by the government that the Chinese constitution guarantees the right of the workers to organize in trade unions. China is too important to avoid. Walmart made an exception and, by August 2006, recognized the right of its Chinese workers to organize. It was leaked to the papers that Comrade Hu, China’s president at the time, was personally behind the letter that made the difference.

By many small and big details, I was persuaded that not only that the development of China is in the interest of China’s working masses, but the legitimacy of the Chinese government is still connected to its serving the interests of the workers and peasants. Capitalism is allowed to some degree, but it still doesn’t control the economy and is not holding the political power. China’s miraculous economic development was achieved not due to the pursuit of capitalist self gains but due to the harnessing of all productive forces (capitalism included) to the common good. Corruption surely exists everywhere, but it is still persecuted and prevented from wrecking the boat. And, of course, far beyond my “sectarian ideological partisanship”, I was happily following the results of China’s rise, pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty in China itself and giving new hopes and opportunities for billions all over the worlds.

What I‘ve seen in Beijing?

There is a famous “Anti Socialist” joke: In a meeting of the communist party some time after the victory over the Nazis in the great patriotic war, the leader was telling the comrades about the great achievements, citing Pravda that all the buildings that were destroyed in the war were already fully reconstructed. One comrade had a comment:

– “I was walking yesterday around the city and it is still half destroyed.”

– “Comrade Ivanov”, was the leaders reply, “good communists are reading the papers and not wandering in the streets!”

Wandering for ten days in Beijing’s streets, and few more days on some small villages around it, I found that what I was reading (and thinking) materializes in the concrete of roads and buildings and in the endless stream of busy and life loving people everywhere.

First impression, coming from small Haifa on the west coast of Asia, you feel that Beijing is a big city, just as the Pacific Ocean is bigger than the Mediterranean. Beijing has a lot of history to show – I hope to write about it and its significance in a separate post. But the real big thing in Beijing is its future. The whisper of the city is not saying “here we are” but “we are coming”. Everywhere you see repairs at work and new buildings compounds being built, rising 10 to 30 stories.

You can see the city is planned to grow. The wide streets at the center of the city, as well as the six highway rings, keep the traffic moving most of the time, even as more and more people now own private cars. The metro is new and sleek. It is the 3rd longest in the world but still too small on the city and new lines are being built. (It is even “foreigners friendly” by having everything in English alongside the unreadable Chinese.) And it is growing in quality of life as well as in size. Many trees are planted along the streets. New and old parks serve the people, some with small lakes, child’s activity centers and sport facilities.

While other cities have most high-rise buildings in the center, emphasizing the power of Capital, Beijing’s center is kept low with historic palaces, public buildings, old markets and slams turned tourist attractions. Even as (almost) every big corporate in the world must have a glass covered corporate building in Beijing, there are more office buildings with only Chinese names and much more high-rise residential buildings, spreading between the rings and far away from the center.

Beijing’s People

You might find it strange, but I was happy to see poor Chinese people everywhere. I knew that they are there: the minimum wage in Beijing is only about 1400 Yuan (233 US$), and if you wouldn’t see the poor people it would mean that they are hidden somewhere.

I loved Beijing because it doesn’t seem to be a segregated city. You may see in the same street new amazing high rise buildings and just over the corners a collection of older building where people are clearly poor – but even as we were wandering into those poor neighborhoods we saw gardens, electricity, air condition, cultural centers, etc.

The metro is clean but swamped. On many entrance there is a thriving market, obviously unregulated and directed to serve the needs and tastes of poor people coming back from work. Wandering out in the streets again you may pass by headquarters of big firms and see hundreds of more stalls serving every kind of cheap popular food to the Chinese masses. Even near the entrance to the imperial palace, the touristic center of the city, most shops are small and are clearly designed to serve the poor. The odd KFC or Macdonald is lost in the endless stream of local shops.

Women are everywhere, driving buses and taxis, working in construction and gardening, selling everything in the streets, serving in the police, selling or managing different shops. Women and men mostly wear modern, simple and elegant T-shirts, jeans and sneakers. You can see iPhones all around, so much so that some Chinese describe the invasion of Apple as a repetition of the Opium Wars that Britain waged against China (and won) in 1839-42 and 1856-60.

Children clearly come one-by-one. Wandering in the parks in the Autumn Holiday and weekends we saw the Chinese princes and princesses surrounded by caring fathers, mothers and grandparents, all so much cared to.

We saw ordinary Chinese people meeting to play music, sing and dance in the parks – to have good time together and not to beg for money. Some of the music was clearly revolutionary songs – we recognized some famous Russian tunes and others from the Spanish civil war and could join the Chinese lyrics with Arabic and Hebrew.

We discussed Beijing’s poverty with our western friends that live in China, all idealistic and very concerned citizens. They said that Beijing 20 million residents are composed of some 15 million registered citizens with full social rights and some 5 million “migrant workers”. Of the migrant workers about half have some legal residency status which allows them some access to social services. The “illegal” 2 or 3 millions mostly live somewhere near the 6th ring, sometimes in really poor conditions. They speak of the local authorities’ relations o the migrant workers – some try to be more liberal and inclusive but others are openly hostile.

This reminds us of the inescapable contradictions that haunt the Chinese quest for development. You simply can’t allow everybody to come to live in Beijing – but preventing it clearly obstructs personal freedom and many poor people still have really hard times. Coming back from China, I don’t have detailed answers for my questions but I’m more confident that the great and tireless Chinese People will find the way to overcome these difficulties.

The Military Coup that ended the rule of Mohammad Morsi, the first freely elected Egyptian President, is a most dangerous curve in the plot of the Arab Spring. Till now things were pretty clear. There were the forces of the old regime, resisting any democratic change in order to defend their privilege. On the other side there was a mass uprising with political forces of all colors calling for democracy.

Now, for the first time, the masses were split and many of the forces that participated in the revolutionary overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship teamed with the forces of the old regime to dissolve all the democratic institutions, the fruits of the revolution.

This obliges us to ask some very hard questions: What is the revolution? What are its goals? Can it still succeed? What is the way forward now? Trying to give answers as major events still unfold is not easy, but as many essential truths are masked by the smoke of war we can from some distance at least resume some of the lost honor of truth and reality, if not full revolutionary perspective.

A Coup is a Coup

It is always good, even at the time of major setbacks, to notice and celebrate small victories. For me that fact that our enemy lies to himself is a victory, because living in a faked reality is the choice of the weak. So when the United States refused to call the Coup a Coup it proved again how hollow is its claim to sponsor democracy and freedom. But the sting came with the position of the African Union – which denounced the Coup and automatically suspended Egypt. It is part of the new world order, where the old imperialist powers prove to be what they are – the enemies of the people – while the emerging states of the third world are taking democracy more seriously.

The Coup and the Revolution

A coup and a revolution are not mutually exclusive “ideas” or types of activity. Actually in the first surge of the Egyptian revolution, in the beginning of 2011, after mass demonstrations have shaken the dictatorship, it was the heads of the army that staged a court-coup to dispose Mubarak in order to save as much as possible of the old regime.

In 2011 the coup was staged to dislodge a regime that was basically a military dictatorship. It was a clear step toward democracy and it was welcomed by everybody. Now the coup is designed to topple an elected president, after the dissolution of the first freely elected parliament and it suspended the democratically adopted constitution.

But, in a sign that Egypt has gone a long way with the revolution, the army, while taking power by force, swears its loyalty to the revolution and the Egyptian people. Unlike 2011, the army avoids taking direct power in its own hands but appoints a top judge, Adly Mansour, as civilian president – noting that the old regime’s judges were best at keeping their positions after the revolution and played a leading role in undermining the new democracy.

Actually the coup in Egypt was not possible without the cooperation and support of big part of the revolutionary forces. This blog made a point of characterizing the revolution not by a political or social agenda but as the active intervention of the masses to change the political order. Many Egyptian people celebrated the coup when it was announced, and many generally democratic and progressive people were rejoiced in the Arab world and beyond. But take care: In the politics of the coup, the alliance between the revolutionary forces and the remnants of the old order is not even an equal partnership. The masses were mobilized to legitimize the move but all the keys of control were given to the representatives of the old order – and it is not an issue of political beliefs but the vested interests of the classes that were (and still are) plundering Egypt and keeping it and its people in poverty, servitude and backwardness for decades.

The Egyptian Political Divide

It is very hard to count people in demonstrations. All estimations from the organizers, the media and the police are always politically biased. It is much easier to count votes – but revolution is a very fluid state with people’s opinions and affiliations changing fast.

An additional reason for the volatility of the Egyptian public scene is the political vacuum that was left by a long period of tyranny – when only very small elite had any experience of political struggle. Religious movements had the advantage of keeping the connection with the masses through activity in the mosques but no real experience in governance or coalition building.

In the first election after the revolution – the Parliamentary elections that took place between November 28, 2011 and January 11, 2012 – the Muslim Brothers came out as the biggest party with 37.5% of the votes. With the (even more Islamic) Nour party’s 27.8% they formed a clear majority in the elected assembly. The forces of the old regime were prevented from taking part.

When the second elections took place – this time for the presidency – in May and June 2012, the political picture already seemed much different. In the first round the Brotherhood came first with 25% of the vote. The clear representative of the old regime, Ahmed Shafik, that was now allowed in by Adly Mansour’s court, came a close second with almost 24%. Third place went to the mild leftist Hamadeen Sabahi with 21%. The next Islamic candidate came after him with 17%.

As a result the second round of the elections was a run-off between the Muslim Brothers’ Morsi and Shafik. Taking into account that all the other candidates were aligned with the revolution, you could expect Morsi to take over 70% of the vote. In the final count it was 51.73% for Morsi against 48.27% for Shafik.

Assuming that almost all the other Islamic vote went to Morsi, it means that the majority of secular pro-revolution voters preferred the clear representative of the old order over a Muslim Brother. And this was in 2012 before any of the true and alleged list of Morsi’s mistakes.

The Problem with the Brothers

At the beginning of the European Spring in 1848, Marx and Engels started “The Communist Manifesto” with the words: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism”. To much the same effect, the Arab World, still in the beginning of its spring, is haunted by the spectre of Islamism. Marx and Engels conclusion was that “It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.” The Muslim Brothers, shaped by decades of persecution, would generally prefer to talk less and do more.

When the Russian Revolution in 1917 started as a mass democratic and social protest movement and toppled the Tsar in February, the Bolsheviks were not the biggest party but they were the best organized and had a clear idea what they want to achieve. Lenin knew he had a short window of opportunity to take control before a new bourgeois political class will establish its rule. In the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917 he was fast to pass into law the “black distribution” – giving the poor peasants in every location the legitimacy of the revolution to independently take control of their land. Later the peasants fought to defend their land by saving the revolution.

The Brothers are the main organized party of the Arab revolution – but they are revolutionaries of a very different kind. If we judge by what they did when they had the chance to rule, they are trying not to rock the boat. They try to give assurances to imperialism. They think they can improve the economic situation simply by more honest, independent and professional management (which sounds likely, taking into account the wild corruption of the old regime). They try to neutralize the influence of the apparatus of the old regime by compromise and by democratic legitimacy.

This “we the good guys” approach to the democratic revolution faces several major obstacles, where every point of their strength becomes also a cause of vulnerability:

Their image as the inevitable winners of the Arab Spring tends to unite all other parties against them, or at least to limit their influence, even before they reach real power.

Their disciplined organization is feared by foes and allies alike.

Their reliance on religious ideology alienates people of other religions, adherents of other tendencies of Islam and an influential liberal middle class – leaving them to fight for an a priori limited support base and making coalition building harder.

Their remedy of gradual reform requires a long time and stable conditions to materialize. It proved a success in Turkey where a similar party took control in democratic elections in a relatively stable country. They seemed helpless and hapless in Egypt where they took control in the middle of political and economic crisis and where all other parties were unwilling to give them an opportunity to prove themselves.

Their readiness to play by the rules of formal democracy is not a good substitute to the more essential basic work of confidence building, networking, bringing together allies and solving problems with rivals.

In the end, the problem with the brothers is not that they don’t stand in my or your standards, but when they don’t stand by their own standards. The Brothers will usually avoid a fight if it is not likely to be an assured win.

In Egypt 2011 they declared that they wouldn’t put a candidate for the presidency – probably because they were aware that winning elections was much easier than governing and that they don’t have the material conditions for implementing their program in government.

Even at the last moment before this week’s military coup, according to the testimony of Yasser Al-Za’atra in Al-Jazeera, the Brothers’ leadership was aware to the preparations for military coup and preferred that Morsi will agree to a referendum about early elections, which will stay within the limits of the democratic game. In the end internal differences prevented this last moment attempt to avoid a clash.

The Revolution must continue!

The limits of the political leaderships are clear… The biggest responsibility rests with the Leftist and Liberal leaderships that play to the hands of the old regime. Now the Brothers justly feel cheated of legitimately won power and their first response is to show that they can’t easily be shoved off.

Still the revolution is much bigger and more important than any political leadership. It is the movement of the Egyptian people to control their own lives and to assure their dignity and social rights. In my view, with the lack of a Leninist leadership that can unite the masses around a clear goal, there is no alternative to the patient building of dialog and understanding between all the sections of society that are interested in a democratic future for Egypt.

It is a hot summer on Haifa’s sandy beaches. Unlike the birds that come in the autumn from cold Europe, summer is the visiting season for people. Until recently the visitors were coming almost only from the rich countries, but, as the third world is now rising to the center of the world stage, we have the chance to meet people from many other places. This week, for the first time, we had a visitor from Kurdistan, Ercan Ayboga (*). As we hold a special warm place in our hearts for the Kurdish people as sisters and brothers in struggle, it was a great opportunity to learn more about Kurdistan, its people and their struggle.

With short notice, Herak Haifa called for an open lecture in Haifa AlGhad club, on Monday 10/6/2013. As I was writing the invitation, I had a problem. Should I write that Ercan comes from “Turkish Kurdistan”? It smacks of ownership. I’m always annoyed when I’m introduced as “coming from Israel”. One important thing that I learned in this lecture is to call the part of Kurdistan that is colonialized by Turkey “Northern Kurdistan”, as “Eastern Kurdistan” is held by Iran, the South by Iraq and the West by Syria. I always prefer to look at things through the eyes and the language of the oppressed people, even though the language that connected us in the lecture was English.

The report below is based on Ercan’s lecture but doesn’t claim to reproduce his very words. I also made some quick research and tried to tell a consistent story as much as I could. I hope you will find it informative as well as inspiring.

History

Kurdistan and the Kurdish people have a long history. Much of it is characterize by the Kurds having some level of self rule (or rule by their local feudal lords) – but under the influence of more powerful regional powers. For a long period Kurdistan was in the borderlands between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The Kurdish language is close to Persian but many Kurds were integrated in the Ottoman state to the level that when they felt pressed by emerging Turkish nationalism few of the Kurdish lords called for restoration of the Caliphate.

The beginning of the twentieth century, and especially the new division of the region after the First World War, saw the emergence of new states guided by the principle of Nationalism. The Kurdish national movement was late to come, and confronted the fate of Kurdistan divided between the neighbors.

The establishment of Turkey as a national state, in a region that was mosaic of different ethnicities, religions and nationalities, was especially cruel, forged by genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing. At first the Turkish leadership succeeded to mobilize some Kurdish support against the Christian Armenian and Greek population in the name of Islam, but soon the Kurds encountered the fire of Turkish nationalism turned against them.

Between 1920 and 1938 there were several Kurdish rebellions against the Ottomans and against Turkey. In one rebellion in 1925 we already hear the complaints about the wiping of the name Kurdistan from the maps, about oppression of the Kurdish language and about forced population transfer.

Between 1928 and 1931 an independent Kurdish “Republic of Ararat” existed until it was crashed by the Turkish army. But none of these rebellions succeeded to unite all the Kurds, or even all the Kurds under Turkey’s rule, in a single independence movement. Turkey had a clear military advantage and cruelly crushed each rebellion with severe consequences to the fighters, their political leaders and the civilian population.

In 1937 and 1938, in the oppression of the Dersim rebellion, (Dersim is an area in North West Kurdistan from where our guest Ercan came), about half the regions’ population was wiped out in massacres and almost all the rest was deported by force. Between 1925 and 1965 North Kurdistan under Turkey’s control was declared a military area and foreigners were banned from entering.

After 1938, as the independence movements were crashed, about a third of some 20 million Kurds in North Kurdistan immigrated (most of them since the sixties) to other areas in Turkey and many Kurds succumbed to forced Turkization.

The Modern Freedom Movement

The roots of the current Kurdish freedom movement are in the radicalization of students and other sectors of society in Turkey in the seventies of the previous century. Since then the most influential force in the Kurdish movement is the Kurdish Workers Party – known by its initials as PKK and officially founded in 1978 – and its leader Abdullah Ocalan. For this reason it is important to understand what is special about this organization.

In addition to its leftist ideology, Ercan mentioned two significant factors that played a role: The PKK cadres, though initially students, were drawn mostly from the poor classes and always remained committed to the defense of the poor peasants and workers; In 1980, when there was a military coup in Turkey and many of the activists had to go to exile, the PKK leadership preferred to gather its forces and set its main new bases in the Arab countries of Lebanon and Syria, not going to the comfort of Europe where other left organizations gradually lost their revolutionary perspective.

This helped to forge an alliance and common thinking with the Arab and Palestinian left, most significantly with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In many aspects the Kurdish movement followed the steps of the Palestinian National movement – the adoption of Marxism and the perspective of National liberation as part of a global movement for social liberation; The adoption of armed struggle as a central tactic which came as a response to the military coup and intense repression; Since the beginning of the 90’s there was a new turn toward mass struggle, which, according to Ercan, was influenced by the success of the first Palestinian Intifada.

The PKK was more successful from the Palestinian left in becoming the main force of the Kurdish national movement, maybe because the Kurdish cause seemed to be a lost case and there was less competition and outside meddling. Now the Kurdish national movement, with the PKK at its center, is a school of its own. It is building on the ground and developing theory for a progressive national movement that adjusts to changing circumstances and tries to get the best for its people.

Through 35 years of heroic struggle the Kurds paid a very high price. It is estimated that 3,500 villages and towns were destroyed and millions became refugees. Tens of thousands of martyrs paid with their lives. Today, according to Ercan’s estimation, there are about 10,000 Kurdish political prisoners out of a total of 12,000 political prisoners in Turkey.

In 1998, after pressure and threats of war from Turkey, Syria expelled Ocalan and there was no state that will give him official refuge. In an international man-hunt operation with the help of (or orchestrated by) the Israeli Mossad, Ocalan was arrested in Kenya on February 15, 1999, and handed over to Turkey. In spite of being sentenced to death (later substituted by imprisonment for life) and being held in harsh conditions, most of the time in isolation, he is still the main leader of the Kurdish freedom movement. On March 21, 2013, it was Öcalan which declared the new ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state, in the framework of new negotiations for a peaceful solution that will protect the rights of the Kurdish people.

Popular Struggle and Popular Democracy

An important achievement of the Kurdish freedom movement is that it is not confined to one region, one organization or one sector of the population. Since the beginning of the nineties the armed struggle is only one tool for the building of an expanding popular base. It begun with mass funerals for martyred freedom fighters, continued with mass demonstrations and clashes with the repressive forces, went on to the organization of legal political parties, the participation in local government, declaration of cease fires and peace initiatives. The celebration of Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, became a yearly major patriotic event with mass participation of hundreds of southlands and sometimes even millions.

One important aspect that distinguishes the PKK and the modern Kurdish freedom movement is the prominent role of women in all aspects of the struggle and on all levels. In a society that is mostly rural and conservative, Kurdish women fight side by side with their male comrades. It is estimated that women are around 30% of the PKK fighters. A similar proportion of women may also be found in the PKK’s leading bodies and in other parties and mass organizations. In 1994, Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish member of the Turkish parliament was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of treason and terrorism after she dared to speak the Kurdish language in parliament.

Popular support and the possibility to legally organize opened new opportunities and fields of action in front of the freedom movement. Ercan expanded his explanation about the establishment of elected local authorities as a field where local people can organize and the movement can prove that it can serve the masses in a good way and to good purpose. It also exposes the movement to the danger of corruption by some of its own local leaders – and tests its ability to fight this corruption. Here the importance of the socially progressive character of the movement and the commitment to the interests of the poor people is essential for success.

He talked about the concept of popular democracy that the movement tries to promote. Elected councils start at grassroots levels. They include direct representatives of the people as well as political parties and civil society. Here again the role of women is essential. The direct involvement of the popular masses in the councils keeps them at tune with the political organizations and keeps the organizations in full awareness of the needs and sentiments of the people. All this is used to look for practical solutions to the issues of economic development, defense of democratic rights, cultural identity and social justice.

With all these achievements, the parties that are identified with the liberation movement receive just about half the popular vote in elections in North Kurdistan. There are still conflicting local identities and interests and scars from the long years of repression and struggle. Some 40% of the Kurdish vote goes to AK, the Islamic party that governs Turkey over the last eleven years. And, as mentioned before, almost half of the Kurds of northern Kurdistan now leave in other regions of Turkey. These facts are taken into account by the freedom movement when it comes to propose a political solution.

New Political Perspective

The PKK went through ideological struggle, trying to adjust its view of the world, its political platform and praxis to the changing world map as well as to local conditions. An attempt to change the orientation of the movement to give up socialism and turn toward the US was rejected. But significant adjustments were made.

Now the main goal of the movement is not separation of North Kurdistan from Turkey but participation in the design of a new decentralized democracy. It could be good for the Kurds, let them control their own affairs, but also for the rest of the people in Turkey.

Around this line the Kurdish parties now try to build new alliances with different progressive and democratic movements and parties in Turkey. For this reason Kurdish activists also participated in the new popular protest movement that was ignited in Istanbul and spread all over Turkey. The connection to the mass movement was all important to them, in spite of the participation of some extreme nationalist and fascists in the movement and the call by some elements for restoration of military rule.

The movement in North Kurdistan has significant influence over the Kurdish people in other regions. In Syria the main Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is associated with the PKK. They regard themselves as part of the Syrian revolution, even though they don’t belong to any of the current leadership coalitions of the Syrian opposition. In South Kurdistan traditional leaderships still play a major role and progressive forces are still small – but in East Kurdistan there are stronger protest movements, based on the youth, which are more radical and democratic.

A similar concept of democratization and de-centralization, people’s power from bottom-up, is also promoted for the larger region. It was conceived as a framework for the solution not only of the Kurdish question but of the needs to get rid of tyranny and find a way for all the diverse religions, national and ethnic groups to live together.

As part of this concept, the Kurdish movement initiated the Mesopotamia Social Forum. They are interested to promote discussion and build cooperation with other movements in the region. Maybe this is what brought Ercan to far-away Haifa.

* * *

(*) Ercan Ayboga (pronounced almost Erjan) is a hydraulic engineer who has lived in Germany and in North-Kurdistan; the latter is his home country. He coordinates on international level the campaign against the destructive Ilisu Dam on the Tigris and is part of the ecologic movement in Kurdistan. Furthermore he is engaged in the Mesopotamian Social Forum (MSF) which brought together in 2009 and 2011 parts of the civil Kurdish and Middle East society. He writes regularly for different Turkish, Kurdish and German newspapers and journals on ecological and political issues.

The regional democratic revolution, nicknamed The Arab Spring, is only at its first steps. After victories in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya there is a tight battle in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. And many other countries are still waiting for their time to come, not least Palestine. But, as elected governments are established after revolutionary victories, we are reminded that democracy is not an end for itself. What will those governments do and what will they bring for the people that elected them?

Lenin once said that Socialism is “Soviets plus Electricity”. To bring that concept into today’s Arab Revolution, we face the democratic tasks and the economic development tasks. On the side of democracy the soviet option is not currently proposed, but neither does anyone rely solely on the abstract forms of democratic representation. There are a lot of ways that the masses organize and they are conscious that their self organization is essential to keep the revolution going and to prevent a sellout. On the economic side the options are pretty blurred.

You could think that doing better than the old corrupt regimes should be easy enough. Put in place honest managers according to their merits, manage public assets to serve the public and not the regime’s cronies, do away with excessive repression and red tape.

But there are many real reasons why restarting the economy after the revolution is never that easy. First, some destruction and confusion is part of the revolutionary struggle – and you start below the point where the old regime left. Second, however rotten the old regime was, some things were working… Remove the corrupt managers and greedy capitalist cronies, and you may lack the knowledge or the connections to make things going, at least in first period. And this is before we speak of intentional sabotage by some that want to show that the people will not be able to live without them and the “sincere” reluctance of investors at the time of uncertainty…

The multinational companies, imperialist powers and their financial and trade institutes had an interest to keep the old subservient regimes in place. Now they may make life hard for any regime that is not doing their bid, or try to force humiliating bargains between political concessions and economic destruction.

As such an important part of the world is looking for a new economic development path, you would expect that regimes, political tendencies and experts from all over the world will be flocking to propose their solutions. But we are at a very delicate period in the historic economic and theoretical struggle between Capitalism and Socialism.

Five years into the economic crisis in the imperialist centers, which started with the Credit Crunch of 2007, the imperialist powers are still looking for a way out of the crisis themselves. They have very little to offer in advice or money.

On the other side, socialists from China to Latin America are confused by the politics of the Arab Spring. China is doing its things by itself, relies on becoming the first world economic power just by growing when the others are stumbling and tries to avoid ideological conflict. The big argument between Capitalism and Socialism tends to be reduced to a more pragmatic argument about the role of the state, cooperatives and other forms of collective ownership in a mixed economy.

For utilizing the state’s power and resources to economic development, to make them work for the people and not for the (un)chosen few, it is essential to develop the trade unions and political organizations of the working masses.

There is also a lot to learn, not only from China, but also from Latin America. Socialism made big advances in Latin America over the past ten years. It started from Argentine, which refused the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank and emerged from economic collapse to fast development. It continued with Chavez, who brought back the state’s oil company, and the oil’s money, to the service of the Venezuelan people. In country after another left wing governments proved that human development is the basic condition for real economic development.

There are as many failed experiments as there are success stories. Socialism is not a magic and not a ready-made receipt to solve all problems. It is just a conscious attempt to build the economy to serve the people. It is just calling the bluff of Capitalism, which tells you that by letting the rich follow their self interests, somehow they will make everyone’s lives better.

It is time for the new governments of the Arab Spring to start providing solutions to the acute social problems through people-oriented economic developments. The only economic method that proved itself capable of lifting hundreds of millions from poverty and liberating them from humiliation and backwardness is Socialism. If the Arab Spring is designed to blossom, we should start to see some red roses.

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With all our enthusiasm about the Arab Spring, the most important issue in the current world situation, that is crucial to understanding where the world is headed, is what is going on in China. Assuming that you’re following conventional media, you should know that China has already passed the US as the world’s biggest economy by many indicators and, if no unexpected catastrophe will come in its way, it is well posed to be the major economic super-power within the next decade.

So this is significant in itself – never before has the balance of economic power shifted so fast and so far. But this is only the beginning of the story. The rise of China on the world stage is very different from anything that we have seen before, much like the rise of the working class to political power. Before Britain or the US became top world powers they were already members of the elite club of dominating economies, like the bourgeoisie was a top economic class before it aspired for political dominance. On the other hand, the working class should build its political power from the position of deprivation, just like China is becoming a world power while still basically a poor third world country.

The changes in the world order are very important, as they open new opportunities for all the people that were doomed by the old order. For example, 10 years ago most third world countries were subject to some type of international sanctions imposed by the imperialist masters. The world prices of raw materials, food and other export commodities of the third world were in historical lows, driving billions of people to the verge of hunger. Un-challenged imperialism twisted the whole world economy to serve the thin interests of the multinational and the Capitalist class. Now sanctions are not working any more. You can sell anything to China at a good price and buy anything from it, cheaper and better. Only since the beginning of the 3rd millennium, with the waning dominance of imperialism, most countries of the third world had the opportunity to start on the course of development.

But world conditions are not enough. The building of the local society, economic development, providing food, education and health to the people – all this should be done on the local level. The fact that China did it proves that it can be done. All people in the poor countries that have to find their own way for social and economic development now look for China and try to understand what is the winning formula.

So the most important question in order to understand where the world is going is whether China is a Capitalist or a Socialist country.

The Capitalist ideology, as expressed by the media and academy, is very ambivalent about characterizing China. On one hand, “nothing succeeds like success”, and, of course, they like to attribute everything that is going right in China to Capitalism. But China is not playing by the Capitalist rules. Main sectors of the economy (energy, communication, banking, etc.) are monopolized by few state owned companies. The state and the communist party are setting development and economic goals and set the rules of the game for state companies, local capitalist and foreign investors. So, in order to prove that real Capitalism is a superior system, pro-capitalists analysts predicts that China will hit a wall unless fully “reforming” to a Capitalist state.

Many Socialists in the West are just as ambivalent about China. Looking at the hard toil and poor conditions of China’s workers and peasants from the height of the privileged working class or petty bourgeoisie comfort in imperialist countries, they find it hard to be impressed by the progress. They forget that the biggest steps that Humanity made toward the “millennium goals” of relieving poverty were the miracle by which Socialism in China improved the lives of more than a billion people. They compare China to the promised Utopia and forget that even in the best system progress requires hard work and will always be gradual.

And China is far from an ideal system. It has plenty of its own contradictions, with corruption, oppression, thriving local and foreign Capitalism and growing inequality. All these contradictions may still halt or even destroy the achievements, but still what was achieved is spectacular and should be explained. Is it Capitalism which, a hundred years after its predicted decay, found a new vitality and for the first time in history made a poor country first class power? Or did the Chinese find the true elusive formula how to build Socialism as a superior economic system?

To try a short answer to this crucial question, I would like to return to a page in the old books of Socialism. We were taught about the struggle between Capitalism and Socialism as an example of Dialectical (Materialist) development of History. Capitalism was the thesis, full of contradictions, creating its own antithesis in the form of Socialism. In order to solve the contradictions of Capitalism, Socialism must prevail. But, in the old book, following the victory of the antithesis over the thesis, there should be a synthesis. This is not a game in Greek words. Any system has its powers that made it work and succeed for some period. In the synthesis the victors, the owners of the new system, are embracing the productive elements of the old system, mobilizing them for the success of the new system.

Fighting for Socialism we were naturally preoccupied with the conflict. We had to overcome the enemy, the Capitalist system. It was “we” or “them”. But Socialism as the victorious antithesis requires some elements of Capitalism in order to build the new economy. Market economy seems to provide one of them. Having Capitalists compete with state companies in the local market is one way to make the new Socialist economy work and serve the needs of the people better. If Socialism is superior it should win not only by the barrel of the gun but also by the explosion of Human productivity and innovation.